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PowerPoint Slideshow about 'Trebuchet Project' - kenaz

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When we first started this project our preconceived perception of trebuchets were very simple, a base, an arm, weight, and a projectile. Although after we started digging into the project we learned very quickly that trebuchets take a lot of time to make, and are also very precise machines. Our first challenge was building the base. We needed to know how long to make it so that the ball wouldn’t hit it on its launch course. Also, we needed to construct the base in way that it would be stable when firing (so energy would not be lost). After that, we moved onto the arm. This was probably the most difficult part of the project. We relied on Atreb heavily for this portion. We had no idea what length the long and short arm should have been. Once we overcame that challenge we moved on to the drilling. This was challenging, because we had to drill the holes perfectly in line with one another or else the axle would be bent. We overcame this by using a pilot rod after we drilled our first hole. There are also some areas in our trebuchet that have room for improvement. One main one was the sling length. This is because of the way we constructed our base. We made our sling based on the constrictions of our base. If we would have had an open base, we would have been able to maximize the length. The other part of our trebuchet that needed improvement was our base. We weren’t able to make it stable (meaning it had a wobble to it). We managed this problem by adding duct tape to it. These are the trials and tribulations that we faced while we constructed our trebuchet.

After we put in our data to Atreb it gave us values for our range and our launch angle. The software said that our trebuchet’s range would be 10 yards. Although after testing out our trebuchet, we found that it threw in the 51 feet range, far exceeding the prediction made by the Atreb program. Upon further inspection, we also found that the launch angle that it gave us was off too. It said that our angle should be roughly 61.9 degrees, although when we froze the trebuchet right before firing, we found that the angle looked much smaller than 61.9. It looked more along the lines of 45-50 degrees. This is probably why our distance was off as well. The values could have also been off due to our sling (we couldn’t make it to the Atreb specs). Even so, our trebuchet’s data differed greatly from what Atreb said it would be, and that’s probably for the better.